


Coming Back

by INMH



Series: hc_bingo Amnesty Fills [4]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: Gen, Non-Graphic Torture, Non-Graphic Violence, Past Torture, Psychological Trauma, Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-01
Updated: 2015-05-01
Packaged: 2018-03-26 13:58:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3853234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/INMH/pseuds/INMH
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A Kingsman comes home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Coming Back

When he comes back to himself, it’s cold and dark.  
  
It’s a curious sensation, coming back to himself as he does; it’s as though he’s been asleep for months, and has taken a very, very long time to bring himself back to full-consciousness.  
  
All the same, he can tell that he hasn’t been sleeping. He’s standing up-right, and the slow burn in his leg muscles alerts him to the fact that he’s been moving, whether he’s been aware of it or not.  
  
Or maybe he’s just been standing for a very long time.  
  
His brain has all the functionality of a slowly rebooting computer, his skin and eyes and ears and nose slowly clicking back on and adjusting.  
  
He’s on a road, paved but not well-kept; the pavement is worn and cracked in some places. There’s about ten yards worth of grass between the road and the dense forest on either side of it.  
  
And all he can hear is silence.  
  
He closes his eyes again, trying to clear his mind in the hopes that the loose ends will connect themselves properly.  
  
He concentrates.  
  
He _remembers_ -  
  
[---]  
  
**_green_**  
  
_then nothing, blurred shapes_  
  
_a body on the ground, limp_  
  
_voices, from everywhere and nowhere, no speaker in sight_  
  
**_his_** _body on the ground, limp_  
  
[---]  
  
It’s too jumbled.  
  
None of it makes sense.  
  
Maybe he should be alarmed, maybe he should be concerned about his lack of memory or the little things he glimpsed in those memories, but at the moment he doesn’t have it in him to puzzle it out.  
  
A fatigue he hadn’t noticed before settles in on him, weighty and oppressive, and he’s stricken with the urge to sit down.  
  
_No,_ he thinks. _If I sit, I can’t guarantee that I’ll get up again._  
  
He glances behind him- nothing but dark road.  
  
He glances ahead- nothing but dark road.  
  
He sighs, straightens himself out, and keeps walking.  
  
[---]  
  
Minutes pass.  
  
They melt into one another so seamlessly that he isn’t sure how many. All he knows is the darkness, his own footsteps, and the burning ache of his legs. Once or twice he comes close to stopping when his head feels strangely light, but nothing comes of it.  
  
Clarity does not come back as steadily as he had hoped it would. Granted he doesn’t try to force it for fear of overwhelming his already strained brain, but he had hoped that his mind would settle into something more functional with time.  
  
But now he’s starting to worry that that won’t happen.  
  
_I’ve woken up_ , he thinks, _out in the middle of nowhere, which is… Not normal._ It takes some thought to come to that conclusion. In retrospect, maybe it shouldn’t have. _I don’t know how I’ve come to be here._  
  
_How did I get here, and when?_  
  
Something in his brain is shaken loose, shoved to the forefront of his mind in response.  
  
[---]  
  
_angry, soft, hissing, mocking voices_  
  
_tension knotted so tightly in his stomach that he feels like throwing up_  
  
_dark place, dim lighting (daytime, perhaps, but terribly overcast) creeping through a curtain and a hard, cold (stone? marble?) floor_  
  
_and it is_  
  
**_bad_**  
  
_very bad_  
  
_there is dread and horror and confusion and a sense of danger, danger, danger_  
  
_and death_  
  
_not just a fear, but an impending, **certain** sense of- _  
  
_(flash of green)_  
  
_(that body laid out on the pavement, eyes wide)_  
  
_death, death, **death** -_  
  
[---]  
  
A shiver runs down his back.  
  
All of the sudden, he’s sweating as profusely as he might if he had a fever. He brings a trembling hand up to his mouth, muffling the sound of his shallow breathing.  
  
There is such a strong sense in him that something truly awful has happened- but his thoughts are so jumbled, his memories so muddied, he can’t figure out what, and that only serves to increase his anxiety.  
  
_I’ve been…_  
  
_I was…_  
  
_I am…_  
  
He can’t complete any of those sentences.  
  
He has no idea where he’s been or what he’s been doing, and cannot confidently say that he is in any particular condition. He can guess that he’s not well, however; that much is obvious. He’s not even entirely sure where he is- he thinks the U.K., though the precise meaning of that acronym, as well as what it implies regarding himself, is a bit beyond his reach at the moment.  
  
He does not stop walking, but he does slow a bit.  
  
_Why should I keep walking?_ He wonders. _Where am I going?_  
  
His brain chugs through the process of providing an answer. It takes about five minutes, and he’s not far gone enough to know that that is not the best sign.  
  
_I must keep walking because… Nothing is here. I have to find people. Places._  
  
And then?  
  
His head is starting to hurt.  
  
He shelves the question and decides to deal with it when the time comes.  
  
[---]  
  
The road goes on, the sky stays dark, and he keeps walking.  
  
Fatigue creeps into the edges of his mind, his eyes, his muscles, threatening to take over if he stops moving. There’s no telling how long he’s been awake- and he hopes that the fatigue will not be enough to make him collapse. He is somewhat thirsty, but not parched; more than that he is hungry. In any case, he shouldn’t pass out, as the human body requires more water to sustain itself during extended periods of physical activity than food, necessarily, although adverse side-effects (nausea headache dizziness) _could_ occur if he doesn’t eat something in a timely fashion.  
  
He slows, almost stops, blinking. That blast of clear-headed logic was entirely unexpected, as though a burst of energy had been given to fuel an undamaged part of his brain. For a moment, he feels normal.  
  
But it’s gone almost as soon as it comes, and he quickly feels that familiar haze of confusion settle down over his head.  
  
_Damn._  
  
Maybe he can-  
  
Something moves in the trees.  
  
He comes to a complete halt, tensing. He is afraid.  
  
_Why?_  
  
He thinks for a moment, a sense of urgency making him push his brain a little harder to make this connection.  
  
_Because of danger. Danger is… I don’t know what’s in the trees. It could be an animal. It could be a person. A person who could hurt me._ _Because-_  
  
[---]  
  
**_green_**  
  
_it’s blinding, everywhere for a moment_  
  
_then gone_  
  
_darkness everywhere_  
  
_(but especially in the eyes of that body_ )  
  
_(dead dead dead_ )  
  
_a flash of movement out of the corner of his eye_  
  
_his heart jumps into his throat_  
  
_moving from the shadows_  
  
**_skull face no no no mask skull mask_**  
  
_(death death death **death)**_  
  
_raising something in their hand and_  
  
_nothing, nothing, nothing at all_  
  
[---]  
  
This time, there is only a moment of respite.  
  
[---]  
  
**_pain_**  
  
_oh, the_ **_pain_**  
  
_pain was everywhere, pain was constant, ongoing, pain was saturated so deeply into his skin that for that length of time, he was not a man, but a being made of pure agony, knowing nothing but the stimulation of so many nerve-endings in every single part of his body_  
  
_so long_  
  
_how long?_  
  
_he doesn’t know, can’t tell, it’s there for eternity and then eternity ends, and his fear and nausea and dread clog his throat and nose and **head** like a chemical stench_  
  
_but it always ends, and an eternity of pain resumes and swallows him like a massive wave and he is dragged down, down, down_  
  
[---]  
  
He swerves and sways like a drunk and stumbles over to the grass, where he falls to his knees and starts to gag.  
  
Nothing but bile comes up.  
  
[---]  
  
It should bother him that he doesn’t remember getting back up. It should bother him that he doesn’t quite recall the moment when he knew he was capable of getting to his feet, that he should keep moving, that apparently there was nothing in the trees that wanted to hurt him.  
  
Had those things occurred to him? Or had instinct compelled him to keep moving, out of some desperate need to keep going towards _something?_  
  
Something else invades now, even more insidious than the fatigue: Dread.  
  
Now he _knows_ something bad has happened, to him specifically- maybe others too, but who can know when their brain is so scrambled?  
  
He wonders if he even wants to know the details, if he wants to know why there is currently a layer of fuzz clogging his mind and making it so difficult to think and reason. Maybe he doesn’t want to know.  
  
But he does.  
  
There’s something even worse in not knowing, something he lacks the ability to put into words at the moment; but he feels he _must_ know, for some reason. Some urgent voice is screaming at the back of his mind, so far off he can’t quite hear it, _you need to know because-_  
  
Because.  
  
Because.  
  
He grounds himself, physically and mentally, and shuts his eyes.  
  
_Where was I before this?_ He demands an answer from himself. _What happened? What happened before I was on this road?_  
  
**_What happened to me?_**  
  
Though his stomach roils at the idea, he tries to focus on the pain. He was on… on the ground, maybe. That sounds about right- though whether it was memory or the logical assumption that that much pain would naturally end with someone being curled up on the ground, he isn’t sure.  
  
But who was causing it?  
  
Someone had to have been. That sort of pain doesn’t just come and then completely disappear unless someone is manufacturing it.  
  
He tries.  
  
He focuses.  
  
And whether he wants it or not, he gets an answer.  
  
[---]  
  
**_pain_**  
  
_“who are you?”_  
  
**_pain_**  
  
_“what were you doing down there?”_  
  
**_pain_**  
  
_“what did you see?”_  
  
**_pain_**  
  
_“where are you from?”_  
  
**_pain_**  
  
_and then in the lull between, from the distant side of the room, “just kill him already, he’s just a muggle, he’s of no use to us or anyone else.”_  
  
_“be quiet.”_  
  
_skull._  
  
_his face is a skull._  
  
_two black holes where the eyes should be._  
  
**_death death death death-_**  
  
_on the floor, he makes a noise, a whimper, and the pointed end of a boot collides with his the side of his head with nearly enough force to knock him out._  
  
_“ **silence!** ”_  
  
**_pain_**  
  
[---]  
  
He reaches up, breathing uneven, and touches the side of his head. There is dried, crusted blood just behind his ear, pasted to his hair.  
  
He feels dizzy, and finally has to sit down.  
  
_Torture,_ he thinks. _I was tortured._  
  
But with what?  
  
He looks down at his arms and legs and torso. His suit is ripped and dirty, but there is no blood beyond the bit on his head. Torture that painful means blood and bruises and broken bones, doesn’t it? And however poorly his brain is working at the moment, he would have noticed if he had a broken bone somewhere. Broken bones are too painful to ignore without a good dose of adrenaline, and he’s not in a position to be producing much of it at the moment.  
  
He feels encouraged, having drawn that conclusion. It does not come the way his epiphany about dehydration did, a fleeting moment of clarity; a minute or two after, it still makes sense and his confusion is ever-so-slightly lessened now. Perhaps he’s getting better.  
  
If he had, at any point, known the identities of the people in that room, he could not recollect them now. They were both men, that much he knows, though he isn’t certain if he’d seen the face of the other man, the one who was not hurting him.  
  
‘ _Muggle_ ’, the man said.  
  
He doesn’t know that word. Maybe he had misheard it?  
  
But what else could they have called him? There weren’t many words that rhymed with ‘muggle’- or at least, none that he could piece together at present- so what else could it have been?  
  
‘Muggle.’ ‘Muggle’.  
  
What is a ‘Muggle’?  
  
_I am. I’m a Muggle. ‘Just’ a Muggle, apparently._  
  
His head hurts.  
  
It hurts so, so badly.  
  
[---]  
  
There’s a new road.  
  
It branches off to his right. But what catches his eye is that, when he looks down the road, he can see a building in the distance, some sort of… Mansion, perhaps?  
  
And all at once, something clicks: He’s been there before.  
  
He’s been certain of so very little since he’s come back to himself, but the feeling that he knows this road, has traveled it before, strikes such a deep chord of familiarity that he becomes almost delirious with relief.  
  
He’s walking down the road before he even fully makes the decision to do so, and now he walks with a bit more energy. With every step he becomes more and more certain that he’s definitely been here before- this building inspires in him the same feeling one gets when they’ve arrived at a place they know intimately, but have been away from for a time.  
  
He _knows_ this place.  
  
In fact, it feels almost- but not quite- like home.  
  
[---]  
  
_“you’re clear on the objective?”_  
  
_“clear as a bell.”_  
  
_“good. i’ll be watching to make sure it goes smoothly. you’ll be fine.”_  
  
_“of course.”_  
  
[---]  
  
There is no pain from this, no fear or foreboding.  
  
It only cements the idea that he is supposed to be here.  
  
The building is definitely a mansion, with a well-kept lawn and surrounded on all sides by the forest. But it is the lawn that catches his attention: Painted onto the grass is a massive K, surrounded by a circle.  
  
Apropos of nothing, he feels tears burning in his eyes.  
  
Not from pain, or fear, or exhaustion (well, perhaps a little)- but from sheer relief.  
  
_Yes, yes, yes._  
  
He is supposed to be here.  
  
He is supposed to-  
  
[---]  
  
_trotting out of the front door and seeing several people in black gear jogging along the path leading around the mansion_  
  
_pleased but not pleased, happy to have them but not happy about the circumstances that led to it_  
  
[---]  
  
The context is beyond him, but he does remember, with startling clarity, a thought he had when he saw those people in this same place:  
  
[---]  
  
_One day they’ll be replacing **me**._  
  
[---]  
  
“Lancelot?”  
  
The man is young and small, with neatly combed brown hair and thick-rimmed glasses. He’s wearing a suit not unlike his own.  
  
_Lancelot_. Is that his name? His own? It seems familiar to him, and he feels like the name is of special significance to him in some regard.  
  
But, as with everything else, the memory and the ability to piece everything together is beyond him.  
  
The other man blinks, apparently surprised to see him.  
  
Lancelot fishes through the muck of his mind and tries to pluck out a name for this person- he thinks he might know it, or did once upon a time- but he finds nothing.  
  
The as-of-yet nameless man finally stops gaping at him and says, “God, Lancelot, where have you been? Merlin’s been going out of his mind trying to figure out where you went.”  
  
When the other man speaks, Lancelot understands the words individually- but all together at a normal speed, his brain can’t keep up, its ability to process the words and their meanings when combined together into a sentence slowed to a sluggish pace.  
  
Lancelot opens his mouth to say something, anything. He wants to speak, wants to ask a lot of things- but they get so jumbled and entangled in one another that he can’t. He can’t speak, can’t form a coherent thought.  
  
Suddenly there are tears brimming in his eyes, and his throat feels tight.  
  
He’s frustrated.  
  
He’s confused.  
  
And he’s just _tired._  
  
Fortunately, the other man doesn’t seem to need verbal confirmation to understand. He gently puts a hand on Lancelot’s shoulder and leads him up the steps and to the door.  
  
“Come along then, let’s go see Merlin.”  
  
[---]  
  
_hand on his shoulder_  
  
_nice_  
  
_good_  
  
_friendly_  
  
_“welcome to kingsman, lancelot.”_  
  
[---]  
  
It takes about ten minutes for the doctors (or nurses, or whatever, he doesn’t know) to figure out that he’s not able to fully understand them, nor is he able to pose any questions of his own. They try asking him to read, and then asking him to write, but it makes no difference: His ability to put together a vaguely coherent thought outside of his own head (which is difficult enough) is nonexistent, and his ability to comprehend is severely limited.  
  
It does relieve him somewhat to realize that he recognizes some of the people who come to see him: A bald man (Merlin) with the same thick-rimmed glasses as the man who’d met him on the steps (Galahad), and an older man (Arthur) who seems very sad when pats him on the shoulder. “It’s good to see you, Lancelot.”  
  
One thing they figure out is that he best understands short, simple sentences, preferably ones spoken slightly slower than normal. Mostly they ask if he’s in pain or otherwise injured (beyond the injury to the side of his head, which is immediately apparent and taken care of quickly).  
  
They poke and prod him for a while, then give him a chance to bathe and change clothes. Fortunately, his motor skills are only slightly impacted by whatever’s wrong with him; showering and dressing himself comes slowly- he has to think a bit about what clothes go on first and how to get them on properly. But he does get it done, and without help.  
  
Merlin brings him back to the medical area where he was first examined, and motions to a bed. “Sleep. We’ll talk later.” He says.  
  
Lancelot wants to ask if Merlin knows what’s wrong, wants to ask what’s wrong with him and how they can fix it, because his frustration is still considerable. But he can’t- not just because he physically can’t, but because that dread is creeping back in and he’s not sure he wants to hear an answer.  
  
He just hopes that Merlin- or somebody- knows, and can fix it. His confusion has lessened somewhat since he came back to himself on the road, but it’s still there, a hindrance at best and infuriating at worse.  
  
He doesn’t want to be like this forever.  
  
[---]  
  
He sleeps, and dreams of green lights and corpses.  
  
And pain.  
  
So, so much _pain_.  
  
[-Epilogue-]  
  
Arthur runs a hand through his thinning hair and lets out a low, slow breath.  
  
“Good God.”  
  
Next to him, Galahad nods soberly. “Heaven knows what they did to him.”  
  
Arthur turns sharp. “Yes, well, we can make some damn good assumptions as to what they did to him. No marks beyond the one on his head, no broken bones- they used that _bloody_ curse on him. Where’s Merlin?”  
  
“Speaking with the Minister. And giving him both barrels, when last I heard.”  
  
Arthur starts off down the hallway towards the communications center, Galahad in tow. And indeed, Merlin is giving Scrimgeour hell over the phone ( _What a Minister, actually bothering to speak to the lowly Muggles of the world on a **phone** of all things_ , Arthur sneered silently). He opens the doors, and Merlin’s tirade becomes crystal-clear.  
  
“-to know what the holy _fuck_ you plan on doing about this.”  
  
Pause.  
  
“No, no, no, see, you don’t understand; I don’t give a God-damn about your promises or your half-assed, bureaucratic platitudes. I also don’t give a God-damn _who_ or _what_ you are. You find out who went after my agent, or what I’ll do to you will make that Dark Lord you lot are so nervous about look like a child throwing a tantrum. Mark me.”  
  
The threat is promptly followed by the phone being slammed into a receiver.  
  
Merlin spins around, expression dark. “I don’t like that bastard.”  
  
“You didn’t like Fudge much, either.” Galahad notes.  
  
“They’re both politicians to the core, just different flavors.” Merlin grunted. “In any case, he seems to think it was Voldemort and his little band of followers. Again.”  
  
“You know, I’ve never been terribly found of nuclear weaponry,” Arthur remarks, irritably fiddling with his sleeves, “But in times like these I remember why I’m not completely set against them. If I could, I’d nuke the lot of them.”  
  
He does not clarify who, precisely, he means by “them”, and Merlin and Galahad do not ask.  
  
“Any word on whether or not they can determine what was done to Lancelot? And treat it, I would hope?”  
  
Here, Merlin deflates a bit, and Arthur’s heart sinks. “They’re willing to offer a consultation. But if the damage came about as the result of the Cruciatus Curse…” Merlin sighs. “…then our options are limited.” He chews his lip for a moment. Arthur does not interrupt him, and so he continues, however morosely. “He did say that if there’s been psychological or physical damage as a result of the curse, then Lancelot will take a great deal of time to recover.”  
  
_If he does._  
  
It goes unsaid, but hangs in the air around them.  
  
Arthur heaves a slow, sad sigh.  
  
“We’ll give it a couple of months and see how he progresses. If he hasn’t made satisfactory progress by September… I’d say we may need to find a new Lancelot.” He says.  
  
“Yes sir.” Merlin responds, but there is sadness in his eyes, as in Galahad’s.  
  
It is never a good day when Arthur has to consider retiring a Kingsman, especially for reasons such as this. But it would be an even worse day if he had to bury one because he did not take the appropriate measures to keep them safe. He has buried plenty in his day, and he does not intend to bury Lancelot.  
  
“I’ll check in again in the morning.”  
  
“We’ll be sure to keep an eye on Lancelot. Good night, Arthur,” Galahad says.  
  
Arthur turns to leave, but then hesitates. “Oh, and if you can, boys?”  
  
“Yes?”  
  
His expression hardens. “Do send someone to fire a warning-shot through Scrimgeour’s window. I’ll not have him forgetting that one of my agents was nearly tortured to madness on his watch.”  
  
Arthur turns on his heel and walks away.  
  
_Bloody wizards._  
  
-End


End file.
